Topic: Department of Marketing and Management
Order Description
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL OUTLINE
OVERVIEW
As part of evaluating the participative process, an individual reflective journal is required to be maintained throughout the course, due for submission after the group presentation and final group report has been submitted. There are two parts to this assignment. The first Part A consists of a pre-activity self-rating of graduate capabilities. The ratings are intended to be your perception of your own capabilities. This perception should draw on your prior experiences, including your university or other studies, paid employment or volunteer work, and from sport, hobbies and other interests. The self-assessment will not be graded, nor will it be shared with others in your class. Part A serves the purpose of allowing the student to focus on graduate capabilities and reflective points to be considered while collecting material and writing up the final reflective journal. Part A is due in your tutorial class in Week 4, Thursday 28th August.
Part B, consists of the self assessment post activity audit of graduate capabilities and a 2,000 word reflective journal report. The self assessment post activity audit will not be marked, but will act as support for your findings in the final report. The final report provides your analysis and reflections about the process of self-assessment that you have undertaken and analyse the evidence you have gathered. Part B is due after week 13 by midnight Sunday 16th November via Turnitin. A hard copy will need to be submitted to BESS by Friday 14th November at 4:30pm.
INTRODUCTION
For many aspects of life, accurate self-assessment is an important and valuable skill. This applies to your own personal and professional development, where self-assessment is often needed to diagnose where you might need additional assistance or training. Similarly, it is useful to be able to use this skill to highlight your talents to gain employment. Accuracy in this skill might also be necessary for you to keep and maintain employment. The “Skills and Capabilities Audit Tool” has been designed to help refine your self-assessment skills. It can also be used to help you identify what kinds of evidence you can present and use as evidence of your level of attainment of skills and capabilities to employers or any other party.
Many such auditing tools and checklists focus on a narrow range of “employability” or “work readiness” skills. These are, of course, important, but many employers are looking for a broader range of capabilities in their new recruits. Analysis of such capabilities might also be useful in your own appraisal of your personal and professional development needs. The list of skills and capabilities is based on the Macquarie University Graduate Capabilities, which cover not only work readiness such as “effective communication” and “critical thinking” but also capabilities related to life-long learning such as “capable of professional and personal judgement” and “commitment to continuous learning”. There are also statements related to the broader community such as “socially and environmentally active and responsible”.
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL THEORY: KOLB’S EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING MODEL
As a PACE subject the participative aspect of this course allows the students to experience an aspect of working for an organisation and to develop a range of work skills that will be able to be transferred to many aspects of the student’s work and social life. Research into experiential learning has found many benefits to periods of reflection during the process of learning as well as at the end.
An experiential model highlighting and integrating the role of reflection has been put forward by Kolb. The experiential learning model is taken from the following two pieces of work:
Kolb DA (1984) Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ.
Kolb DA and Kolb AY (2005) Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education, Academy of Management Learning and Education, 4(2), 193-212.
Kolb (1984: p21) defines experiential learning as a “holistic integrative perspective on learning that combines experience, cognition and behaviour”. Without reflection on experiences, students may not identify a range of capabilities and skills or changes in behaviour that are taking place. Furthermore, they are in danger of repeating the same errors or not identifying incorrect assumptions and biases applied to a particular situation. Reflection enables making sense of a situation, comprehending, understanding and answering questions, making necessary personal and social connections thereby increasing knowledge and the overall learning effectiveness.
A brief description of the stages follows:
(i)    Concrete experience (CE): provides the basis for the learning process. Lessons are learnt by individuals through adaptability and open mindedness rather than a systematic approach to the situation or problem. This is where the student is actively experiencing an activity.
(ii)    Reflective observation (RO): students during this stage learn from their experiences and by articulating why and how they occurred. They reflect, observe and critically examine their experiences from all perspectives. This is where the student is consciously reflecting back on that experience.
(iii)    Abstract conceptualization (AC): relates the observations and reflections made during RO stage to the theory or subjective concept. Students use logic and ideas as opposed to feelings to understand situations and problems. This is where the student is presented with/or trying to conceptualize a theory or model of what is to be observed.
(iv)    Active experimentation (AE): during this stage students test the theories to make predictions about reality and then act on those predictions. This is where the student is trying to plan how to test a model or theory or plan for a forthcoming experience.
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL PART A
This section Part A is to be completed before commencing the marketing project. It is based on a table of skills and capabilities for you to use in undertaking a self-rating exercise before you do your participation activity. You will choose six (6) aspects of the graduate capabilities to concentrate on during the marketing report process.
Instructions:
1.    Read each of the statements in the table provided and rate yourself in the ”pre-activity self-rating” column as to how well you think you exhibit these capabilities. Use the rating scale provided below:
Rating scale : A (Excellent), B (Highly Effective), C (Effective), D (Needs improvement or Inconsistent), E (Unsatisfactory or untested).
The ratings are intended to be your perception of your own capabilities. This perception should draw on your prior experiences, including your university or other studies, paid employment or volunteer work, and from sport, hobbies and other interests.
The self-assessment will not be graded, nor will it be shared with others in your class, though you will need to submit it as a record of the pre-activity self-assessment. It is anticipated that everyone will have some areas that “need improvement” or are “unsatisfactory”. When you revisit this list again after your participation activity, you may wish to revise some of these original ratings, either up or down – this is to be expected as you measure yourself against the requirements of the activity, supervisor’s expectations and remarks, and capabilities of co-workers. Self-assessment is an ongoing process and we are all revising our view of ourselves as we try new things.
It is certainly possible to rate yourself low or very low so as to show improvement whatever you learn from your activity. This approach will not, however, help you develop accurate self-assessment skills. Moreover, no marks are attached to the actual self-assessment, but will be given for your analysis and reflection at the end of the process.
2.    Choose six aspects of capabilities that you would like to target for your activity. These might be ones where you have rated yourself poorly, or that are particularly relevant to your future career aspirations, or ones that are related to your activity. Highlight these with an X in the column, labelled “target capability”.
3.    Save one copy for yourself (you will need it again after your activity) and submit one copy to your lecturer via Turnitin by the end of week 4, Sunday 26th August. Please save the file in the following format before submitting:
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL: COLLECTING A PORTFOLIO OF EVIDENCE DURING THE REPORT PROCESS
The activity you undertake as part of this unit will provide you with an opportunity to develop or improve at least six aspects of capabilities identified through in the table you filled in for Part A. While undertaking the activity you will be required to collect ‘evidence’ of your ability regarding these capabilities (and any others that you would like to show).
For the purposes of this exercise, acceptable evidence is considered to be a sample of your work from the activity that verifies the capability you say you have developed or improved. For evidence to be useful to both you, and potential employers, it must provide confirmation of what it is you say you can do. Types of evidence you may use for this exercise include: podcasts; videos; photos; PowerPoint presentations; press announcements; business reports; wikis; blogs; project management documentation; SWOT analysis; a set of interview questions; a set of alternative strategies for responding to a crisis; fictional stories; etc.  It is recommended you gather as many samples of your work as possible throughout your activity. At the end you will need to select three which best illustrate your capabilities.
Below are examples of what is considered acceptable evidence for the development of particular capabilities or aspects of capabilities:
1)    professional/technical competence could be demonstrated via a project management plan for your activity
2)    risk assessment and/or problem solving capabilities could be demonstrated via a set of alternate strategies for managing a crisis within the context of your activity
3)    effective speaking and/or the use of communication technologies could be demonstrated via a podcast you have produced for your activity.
Evidence that is not useful includes where the sample of work does not demonstrate the capability you claim to have developed in a clear and obvious way.  Unacceptable evidence also includes evidence where matters of confidentiality and privacy are in breech. This could involve work that includes sensitive or a company’s ‘competitive’ information; the personal details of clients and/or customers; and, the unauthorised use of photographic images, which are particularly problematic if they involve children under 18 or Indigenous Australians.
Before selecting your ‘best’ evidence consider the following:
•    Does the sample of work clearly demonstrate the capability I claim to have developed?
•    Will a potential employer gain a good understanding of my capabilities from this evidence?
•    Does this evidence breech any confidentiality or privacy agreements with the organisation/people I have been undertaking my activity with?
The process of gathering useful and ‘valid’ evidence about your own capabilities will promote your self-assessment skills and help you identify your strengths and those areas needing improvement. Such evidence might also be used when applying for jobs.
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL SELF ASSESSMENT POST ACTIVITY
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL PART B
This part of the task will be marked and graded based on the following two sections of work. The total reflective journal is 2,000 words.
A.    Select the 3 best pieces of evidence you have gathered, make them available to your lecturer, label which aspects of capability/capabilities each exemplifies and describe why this is a good piece of evidence (1 000 words).
B.    Write and submit a 1000 word report that provides your analysis and reflections about the process of self-assessment that you have undertaken and analyse the evidence you have gathered. This section relates to the pre and post skills and capabilities audit students completed as well as an overall view of the evidence collected.
Some questions you may wish to consider are listed below (you do not have to address all of these, they are provided for stimulus only):
•    Based on your completed audit tool, how accurate were your pre-activity ratings? Were there any areas where you over or under estimated your abilities? Why do you think you  might have over or under estimated your abilities? OR Why do you think your ratings were accurate?
•    How can you improve the accuracy of your self-assessment?
•    What kinds of evidence did you gather? Why influenced your decision to gather these particular kinds of evidence? Looking back are there any other kinds of evidence that might help demonstrate your abilities?
•    What kinds of evidence might you need to persuade an employer that you have particular skills and capabilities? How could you present these?
•    Were some kinds of skills and capabilities easier to find evidence for than others? Which ones and why?
•    Were there any unexpected outcomes? Did you improve markedly in a capability that you did not anticipate?
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